Classic Poem

Rosy glow the rugged heights
Half way up the mountain hole,
As sunset o'er the funnel, lights
With wine, the grand communion bowl;
'Twixt farther peaks Potomac's sheet
In pale wide bays extends its floss,
These and the sky seem hands and feet
When stretched the Saviour on the cross;
Rock bars, the scars of civil wars,
Like music scales on rift and ridge,
Sing of the Sunday when the cars
Stopped like an organ, on the bridge:
His gallows' beams o'ertop the town,
The mountains, only, hanged John Brown.

Name so lowly, sponsored never,
Parent of his mighty thought,
Rhapsody was his endeavor,
Like Prometheus he fought.
Nothing since has here abided
But the spell of Nature's spasm,
He the scenery divided
And his spectre fills the chasm.
Armorers and all their din,
Feudal times, he gathered in;
Him suspended, when he went,
He suspended government!
As a whirlpool leaves a tragic
Rift aghast where it sucked down,
In the camera of magic
Swims thy maelstrom face, old Brown!